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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will remain in a London prison until a British court takes up a Swedish request for extradition for questioning on sexual crime allegations. An international group of former intelligence officers and ex-government officials have released a statement in support of Assange. We speak to one of the signatories, Daniel Ellsberg, the famous whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War in 1971. “If I released the Pentagon Papers today, the same rhetoric and the same calls would be made about me,” Ellsberg says. “I would be called not only a traitor—which I was then, which was false and slanderous—but I would be called a terrorist… Assange and Bradley Manning are no more terrorists than I am.” [includes rush transcript]

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This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMYGOODMAN:The Guardian newspaper, for whom [John Vidal] writes, is a British newspaper that is one of the partners with WikiLeaks in releasing the State Department cables. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been transferred to the segregation unit of the London prison he has been held since his arrest earlier this week, this according to The Guardian newspaper.

Assange was been denied bail following his arrest in London on Tuesday on an international warrant to face sexual crime allegations in Sweden. He will remain in custody until at least December 14th, when a British court takes up a Swedish request for extradition. Assange has not been charged with a crime, but he’s wanted for questioning on allegations of unlawful sexual contact with two women in Sweden. Assange has maintained his innocence. He’s called the case a political witch-hunt that’s intensified with WikiLeaks’ release of secret U.S. diplomatic cables.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the Justice Department has made it clear it hopes to prosecute Julian Assange over the leaked documents. This is U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

ATTORNEYGENERALERICHOLDER: We have an active, ongoing, serious investigation of that matter. We had, I think, informal conversations about the WikiLeaks matter, the concern that it has raised in the minds of all of us. And the hope here in the United States is that the investigation that we are conducting will allow us to hold accountable the people responsible for that unwarranted disclosure of information that has put at risk the safety of the American people and people who work on behalf of the United States.

AMYGOODMAN: The New York Times reports the Justice Department is considering ways to indict Julian Assange beyond the Espionage Act. Other possible offenses under consideration include conspiracy or trafficking in stolen property.

Julian Assange has also received support from people around in the world. In Australia, hundreds rallied in Sydney today in support of Assange and condemned the Australian government for its stance on the issue. Meanwhile, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva criticized Assange’s arrest as “an attack on freedom of expression.”

And an international group of former intelligence officers and ex-government officials have released a statement in support of Assange. It reads in part, quote, “WikiLeaks has teased the genie of transparency out of a very opaque bottle, and powerful forces in America, who thrive on secrecy, are trying desperately to stuff the genie back in.”

The signatories include Colonel Larry Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell; former FBI special agent Coleen Rowley; former British Intelligence employee Katharine Gun; and Daniel Ellsberg, perhaps the country’s most famous whistleblower, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Dan Ellsberg now joins us in our studio in New York, as I speak to him from Cancún.

Dan Ellsberg, welcome to Democracy Now! Julian Assange behind bars in Britain. We’ll see what happens on December 14th. Talk about the significance of what has happened so far.

DANIELELLSBERG: Well, as I listened to Attorney General Holder on your program just now, I realize that he’s in the same position of that Attorney General Mitchell was in 40 years ago with the Pentagon Papers when they came out. We have an act of free speech, of free press, of informing the public, an act in search of a crime, in search of a law that would call it criminal. No one had ever been prosecuted for what I had done then, revealing top secrets. There had been many leaks in the past, then as now, and no one had ever been prosecuted. I was the first. The act they found was the Espionage Act, which was passed in 1917, was never intended to work as an Official Secrets Act, as in England, which would criminalize any release of classified information. But they tried it on me. I was faced with a possible 115 years in prison, which is the kind of sentence they would love to hang on Bradley Manning, who is accused of being the leaker in this case. We don’t know if he was, but I’m going to give him credit for it, since I regard it as a very admirable act, for which I thank him at this time. And if he’s — if the credit is not due, it’s due to the source, whoever that was.

So, I think, actually, what this is about, to a large extent, is trying to, once again, to instate the Espionage Act as if it were an Official Secrets Act, use it to cut down, close off unauthorized disclosures to the American public from inside the government, and also to accompany that with a legislative move to supplement it with an act that is explicitly an Official Secrets Act, one that clearly Congress intends to criminalize any release of classified information, such as the one you were just quoting to — in Cancún. I was interested that the recent release — Amy, you must have been reading it, actually, unlike most people, and found something of note in the cables that were released by the New York Times, given to them by WikiLeaks, and eventually by the source, about what Bradley Manning is reported to have said, the U.S. throwing its weight around against the poor countries of the world to exploit their resources, something that he said he was determined to expose to the American people.

AMYGOODMAN: In the letter that you’ve joined with others, very significantly among them Larry Wilkerson, the former chief of staff of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, you are fiercely critical of the media. Talk about the role that it has played.

DANIELELLSBERG: Well, in this case, as in the Pentagon Papers, I do give the New York Times credit for working with these materials and presenting material to their readers. And in fact, there really — if they find a crime, or if they invent a crime or pass a crime — criminal law that would cover WikiLeaks, it will cover the New York Times, and you, Democracy Now!, and anyone who presents news that in part reflects leaks, unauthorized disclosures from within the government.

Actually, the wording of the Espionage Act, which, as I say, was not intended for this purpose, but the wording of it is so broad that it applies to readers of this classified information. If they are unauthorized possessors, which they are from the point of view of the government, then they can’t discuss it. They can’t join chat logs, let’s say, discussing it, and they have to, quote, “return” it, which is quite challenging with digital material like this. But they’d have to return their copy of the New York Times, I guess, to the Justice Department. That actually is in line with what the government has been saying right now, directing its employees that they cannot download WikiLeaks or the New York Times sites that reports the WikiLeaks onto their computers at work or at home — just where that leaves their family members, for instance. Is it possible that it could be discussed around the family table, if someone else has downloaded it?

We’re in an absurd position here with a close down of public discussion of official matters, very similar to that of China. In fact, I even wonder whether there’s a rule that absurd in China. And that’s the kind of information system, I think, that our leaders aspire to, and have for a long time.

AMYGOODMAN: Julian Assange has been the target of assassination and arrest calls from a number of U.S. politicians and commentators since the release of the diplomatic cables. This week, a Democratic Party consultant, Fox Business commentator Bob Beckel, called for illegally shooting Assange. This is what he said.

BOBBECKEL: We’ve got special ops forces. I mean, a dead man can’t leak stuff. This guy’s a traitor, a treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. The guy ought to be — and I’m not for the death penalty, so if I’m not for the death penalty, there’s only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a [bleep].

DANIELELLSBERG: Well, it’s appalling. I didn’t remember that, but it’s appalling. You are reminding us that it’s not only Republicans like Sarah Palin and others, and Peter King, who will be a high — have high position in the House in the next term, who are calling for this kind of thing. In my case — I’m sure, by the way, that if I released the Pentagon Papers today, the same rhetoric and the same calls would be made about me at this time, the same material, same instigations. I would be called not only a traitor, which I was then, which was false and slanderous, but I would be called a terrorist, as a matter of fact. Now, that’s the word today for someone who is beyond the pale of any rights, of any rights of citizenship or any human rights, someone who can be just dealt with summarily like that. The reason for calling for illegal shooting, which is an odd and unusual call, is, as I said at the beginning, because our legal system, with its glorious First Amendment, we don’t have a law that makes it clearly illegal to do what — the truth telling that WikiLeaks and New York Times and Julian Assange has done. Assange and Bradley Manning are no more terrorists than I am, and I’m not.

And that is a — it’s appalling that our conversation after 9/11, in the last ten years, has reached a point where what Nixon did to me covertly can now be called for and actually done openly and very specifically. Nixon brought a dozen Cuban American émigrés, Bay of Pigs veterans, up from Miami to at least beat me up. The words were “incapacitate Ellsberg totally,” which covers the word “kill,” which, as their prosecutor said to me at the time, these guys, who were CIA assets, they don’t use the word “kill.” They avoid it. They use words like “neutralize” and “eliminate” and “with extreme prejudice,” “terminate,” that sort of thing. They avoided the word “kill.” I notice that the change now is that not only is that, which was a covert action, which actually was critical in bringing Nixon down because it was recognized as not only illegal, but really against American values in a fundamental sense, that has now become something you can talk about quite openly. And even the President can refer to special operations teams worldwide whose work is to capture or kill. The word “kill” is no longer avoided in these circles, assassinating people who get in the way by telling the truth.

AMYGOODMAN: Dan, we’re going to have to leave it there. I thank you very much for being with us, Dan Ellsberg, a premier American whistleblower, released the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago.

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